Digital Pharma: Pfizer, Enbrel and UK Google Adwords
pharmafile | October 22, 2010 | News story | Medical Communications | ABPI Code of Practice, Digital Pharma blog, Enbrel, Google Adwards, PMCPA, Pfizer, pharma SEO
Pfizer is using Google Adwords in the UK to promote an online eCongress for healthcare professionals interested in its arthritis blockbuster Enbrel.
The company is breaking new ground for digital pharmaceutical marketing in the country, with Enbrel the only top 10 pharma brand in the UK currently employing links in this way.
Widely used elsewhere, paying for sponsored links that appear at the top of a search results page is a grey area for UK pharma, which lacks specific online guidance.
Earlier this year a PM Society working group concluded that search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques were acceptable under the UK’s Code of Practice, including the use of “legitimate paid-for techniques”.
Responding to the group’s findings at the PM Society’s Digital Update meeting earlier this year the director of the Code of Practice regular Heather Simmonds said SEO was “probably justifiable” if responsibly and appropriately done.
“[It’s] about being sensible and appropriate. At the end of the day you don’t want to promote medicines to patients, or to be in breach of the Code,” she concluded.
Nonetheless there remains no definitive guidance for UK pharma companies in this area.
The eCongress that Pfizer’s sponsored link promotes is for European healthcare professionals only and accessed via the company’s enbrel.eu website, but only for registered users.
The eCongress is based on the same ‘virtual booth’ model used by Pfizer Oncology earlier this year for a promotional tie-in with the ASCO congress.
But the Enbrel site is rather confused when it comes to its audience, stating that it’s “intended for residents of Europe” and that it has “content for healthcare professionals in Europe, the Middle East and Africa”.
Furthermore there are two ways for healthcare professionals to register, one of which contains a number of broken links.
Pfizer’s search engine optimisation
The sponsored link to the congress appears on google.co.uk searches for ‘Enbrel’ when set for both ‘the web’ and when refined to ‘pages from the UK’. The sponsored link does not appear for the drug’s generic name, etanercept.
The brand name similarly produces the paid-for eCongress link on a search using Google.com.
In ‘organic’ search results the www.enbrel.eu website first appears halfway down the second page of results, but not with a link that refers to the eCongress.
Dominic Tyer is web editor for Pharmafocus and InPharm.com and the author of the Digital Pharma blog He can be contacted via email, Twitter or LinkedIn.
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